Many modern computer systems utilize non-volatile memory (NVM) for data storage. NVM retains its contents even when power is not being supplied to the NVM, and can thus retain its contents through a power-cycle of the computer system. One common type of NVM technology is flash memory.
Some newer computing systems utilize NVM as random-access memory (RAM); however, frequent writes to NVM can cause wear-out and eventual failure of the NVM. In addition, read or write accesses to NVM typically have higher latency than accesses to volatile memory types.